What is the general consensus on server emptyness?

Hello all, this is not intended as a "merge teh servars!" or "this game is dead" thread, but it really saddens me to see the emptiness on some of the servers. I recently moved my toons over to freedom because there was just not as many people on as there used to be.

I remember logging on Guardian(and any other server) in the i4-i8 span and seeing a populated atlas park with costume contests every day and a search full of level 1s through 50s. Now, a whois shows 3 people in atlas park who may or may not be AFK.

I am afraid that when GR hits there will be more people spread out and when new players hit the game they see it as a ghost town, think nobody plays, then quits.

I luckily found a great SG on Freedom, but was visiting my characters on other servers and it pales in comparison to what Freedom is like.

Some people make statements like "But we like our servers less populated" which is usually followed by paraphrasing a 15 year old spamming in a popular zone. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that you actually like being one of the only 14 heroes/villians on your server at that time. I can understand these people that make these statements are defending the game and reassuring themselves, so I do not hold anything against them.

Question: Is there any word if the devs will be offering free server transfers again?

Idea: Instead of a server merge, maybe a box can show up with a rough display on how many people are active at that time when you hover over the server name with your mouse. Something vague like Heroes online: Over 1000 and Past week: Over X. That way new players can make a better judgment on what kind of populous they want to join. Combine that with free server transfers(or lower the price..I'm not exactly hurting for money but $10 seems a little excessive) and you don't have to risk new players thinking CoX is a ghost town, or old vets thinking everybody left.

I was just wondering the general consensus is about all of this, or if there was any official word from the devs. I know somebody made a statement that they were very happy with their subscription numbers, but it honestly seems like there are less people playing now than their used to be.

Honestly, I don't see the same game as you. I am on Victory. I use global channels. I form teams. I post to the forums for events. I get blind invites. Did I mention I play on Victory?

And yes, IMO, I think maybe one day the devs will give free xfers again for some reason they know.

Edit - to clarify last sentence.

Not the dreaded I can't find a team , server is dead tread again

We need more servers, even hidden with "Not Teaming" flagged, I get asked to teams.

Consensus? Here? In a forum?



Hahahahahaha!!

There's degrees of emptiness? Thats about it.

Last time I checked Pinnacle, there were 50 villains and about 100 heroes found in search. This doesn't count those that run around hidden from searches. Like me.

So let's be extra nice and assume that half the player population is hidden. (I seriously doubt that.) That would mean there were 100 villains and 200 heroes on Pinnacle that night.

As a soloist, I don't care about player population for my own purposes. I do care, however, about player population being high enough that the servers stay open so that I can continue my soloing ways.

I'm not sure that an average 500 players on line per server is going to cut it.

Recently, I was getting worried that the forums were basically dead and that it felt like people were just gone. Then I remembered that a heck of a lot people were most likely in Beta right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Based on what I've seen outside of Freedom and Virtue, I think the question on server merges has gone from "if" to "when".

I play exclusively on Virtue so never had a problem with population.

I do sometimes play on other servers to test a character out before "committing" to using a slot on Virtue, but thats about it. Still, those servers do seem pretty quiet in comparison :/

Hopefully GR will bring in some fresh blood and returning players. I know some people don't like crowded servers, but I think for the games health and players in general it would be nice to see a more lively, buzzing community. Playing on your own for most people is pretty boring.

Also... the lower the populations go, the more people will avoid low population servers and instead migrate to servers which are popular. So even if the devs don't do anything, unless something changes you are only going to see the quieter servers get quieter and the busier servers get busier, which has already been happening for a while now.

Eve Online did it right. Single Server for every one that plays the game. This gives you the best sense of cohesion and community. It also solves a number of problems inherent in MMO's. For examtople playing with your friends is easier if theirs only one server its. Its also better for the devs so they can do big events. Unfortunately at this point all our servers are too well-established to effect a server merge, people would scream bloody murder.


Also asking for a general consensus on a forum for voicing your personal opinion is.... a bit redundant.

as i always ask, are you on your global channel? the instanced nature of the game makes things look very empty. That said, I would prefer things be a great deal more full, but since a lot of people from the forums have commented that their friends are waiting for going rogue, we will have a clearer picture when that goes live.

I know at the zeb the zombie hunter event on liberty the zone was packed, and this was at 3pm pacific durning the weekday, and our msr's spawn extra instances of the rwz, and lib is not a traditionally high pop server.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I'd say the general consensus is... no consensus.

Some of the pertinent details have already been brought up, such as the highly instanced nature of the game, the use of various global channels to manage teaming across multiple servers, and so on. There are also external game factors, with multiple other desirable games having launched over the past couple of months, the recent Steam Forth of July sale, and competition with other MMO's, such as World of Warcraft and AION. MMO populations rise and fall, as other things happen outside of the MMO population.

I do want to assuage Bill's worries that servers might be turned off, or that a server merge is in the future of the game.

First, the setup of City Of Heroes isn't really conducive to merging the servers. Too many servers have players with the same name, or supergroups with the same name, or many other factors.

Second, the running cost for a server is actually pretty small at this point in time. The servers have, by and large, paid for themselves multiple times over, and there's money left in the bank to finance bandwidth for a considerable time. Ergo, there's no push to turn off servers due to operating cost overhead.

Also, NCSoft has also committed itself to a multi-year plan with City of Heroes, and I think NCSoft will only revise / revisist the intent of it's multi-year plan if Going Rogue has an extensive weak market performance.

Going Rogue will be launching towards the end of summer and the beginning of the US school year (I think the EU also gets summer off? yes? no?). I suspect NCSoft will be looking at the expansions performance figures over the fall / winter quarters before making any judgment calls over whether or not the game is genuinely bleeding subscribers that won't come back, or if the slow-down is indeed linked to external factors.

Ergo, we probably won't see any major moves from NCSoft over City Of Heroes till next year at the earliest.

If subscriber numbers don't meet NCSoft's expectations within that time, that's probably when we'll see the call on whether or not CoH continues as is, or if Paragon Studios is tasked to get CoH2 out the door while putting the original CoH on standby.

My opinion is that CoH2 is NCSoft's Nuclear option. They'd rather not pull an SOE and fund an entirely new engine / new game when the old game is still very viable for upgrades / enhancements...